Jade Chan Adventures
by auspiciousabsolution
Summary: Jade is a young agent for an underground facility that captures cryptids and creates new tech in a semi-apocalyptic world. Despite still being a spy, Jade is left languishing in boring deskwork longing for the old days. Its not until new friends and old enemies resurface that she gets to kick but and get back into high gear. This time though, it may not be exactly like "old times".
1. Chapter 1

"And that is how the crookie crumbles!" Jade proudly proclaimed in a loud whisper through her voice-modifier, earning a faint but audible groan from her three prisoners that sat below the street light she now perched on. The pilferers that tried to stick their hands in the literal and metaphorical cookie jar were a skinny Caucasian man with a frosted Jheri curl, a rather portly Chinese fellow with a dreaded mullet , and a stout woman with rubber duck floaty around her waist. Each wore dark grey sweats, black eyes, and defeated grimaces.

The trio of thugs had just attempted to rob Táng Jīng-les , a cat themed sweet shop that sat unopposed and unprotected in the near abandoned San Franciscan street. Since the place was being rebuilt, it and every other building that could house a business were constantly picked off by local opportunists that wanted to pilfer more than the occasional puff pastry.

Tonight, however, the shop itself even seemed to get the last laugh as the chubby, orange and red cartoon, calico, cat mascot grinned sardonically from above the shops entrance. Jade jumped off of the top of the lamp post into the darkness surrounding the streetlight, landing with a graceful, dusty thud.

One clunky black boot went over the other as she ambled lazily around the edge of the orange street light, her backpack jingling like the bell around a cat's neck. "I would be inclined to let you go, on the account of me being a rather sweet individual" Jade Tsked the burglars, closing her eyes and shook her head. "Unfortunately for you, this is my favorite dessert shop and I don't remember thievery ever being on the menu".

Granted it was one of the only dessert shops around, but she was too pleased with her wittiness to care . "Now" She pressed a button on her gloved wrist and flipped backwards onto the seat of a jet-black hoverbike that rode rider less to where she stood " if you excuse me, I've got to make like a banana on a sundae-" With a smile and a snap of both her fingers into guns she finished: "and split."

The young agent rushed off into the night with a distorted cackle, weaving through alleyways as the night air washed over her, cool and fresh. Black gloved fingers set to make another anonymous alert to the local authorities of the 'crookies' she left for thought back to her parting comment to her captive audience and bemone to herself: 'Does Táng Jīng-les even serve sundaes anymore?', Jade thought. 'If not then that joke back there really fell flat-' a chilly drop of rain plopped on her head.

Jade halted her bike to an four way intersection, surrounded by dilapidated and broken buildings. 'Funny', she thought ,'Whatever happened to it never raining in southern california?' Jade looked around her and saw no clouds, just a starry sky with only a few tufts of clouds. It wasn't until she looked up past the dull orange of the street lights directly above her that she paused and saw one large and lonely cloud formation with a suspiciously metallic shine in it. She immediately pulled on her big, round scanning goggles from where they hung on her neck and sent direct feed to Kepler back at Section 13.

For now it didn't matter that she was out past curfew and operating (hopefully) outside of Section knowledge without a lick of clearance. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't some civilian cruise liner and definitely not a friendly military grade ship out for a leisurely night time jaunt without so much as a 'could we trouble you for some sugar or maybe some airspace clearance?' over the communication lines. The night was way too quiet for that to be the case.

She clicked at the side of her goggles once more to the density scanners, and there it was! She was able to make out the ship floating beneath the cloud cover, its pace sluggish over the city. She smiled awkwardly beneath her bandana, as this was quite literally up her alley. "You seeing this doc? " She pressed her body close to her hoverbike that was parked in the dark alley hoping the night would cloak her well enough from whoever may be up there. A click followed a buzz in her ear, Kepler's tired nasally voice affirming "Sure am kiddo, got the rest of Surveillance on it. No pulse Id, no plates to speak of, nothing." he sighed into her comm "Can't even catch a heat sig on that thing, probably best not to engage it quite yet"

Some loose strands of hair still flitted from beneath her hood thanks to her rushing directly into the sky, the strong familiarity of the streetlights fading away as she made her ascent. "Jade please tell me you are not doing-" Kepler interrupted "I just want a closer look, don't worry, getting close will be a piece of cake.". She didn't mention that it was because she was riding on an unregistered hoverbike, but the communication lines are recorded full time, and it's best not to incriminate herself more than what she had.

Kepler yawned quickly, typing furiously as he said "As much as I want to know how that thing is evading our primary scanners, Do not engage that thing directly. Anybody with that kind of weather simulation and heat obscurity must not be here for-" "tea and cookies? "Jade interrupted. "Exactly" Kepler agreed. "Your puns are more dessert oriented today" He added as an afterthought. Jade could only laugh nervously "Just feeling a bit sweet, I guess." She could almost hear Kepler shrug with indifference on the other side. Thankfully his obsessively tinkering nature never afforded him to probe to deeply into the psychology of Jades punnery; a fact that she appreciated greatly in both her lines of work.

Strand by strand, her hair became obscured by the inky blue night above. The higher she climbed into the air, the harder the rain splattered and rolled off her unofficial body armor. She shot through like a bullet up to the peripheral clouds near the was a pretty huge airship, about the same size and look of a frigate, but streamlined so that the hull shone weakly against the aether and clouds that clung to it."We're sending up some heavily armored backup up there, as a well as few drones. Sit tight kid". While his voice remained its same patronizing monotone, she couldn't help but hear the worry fizzle into it. Like he would actually be in trouble. She can handle herself.

A breeze washed over her from a break in the cloudbank, and she could feel the chill of it in the joints of her improvised armor. And the young agent started to feel a little bit on the exposed side. Jade banked into a stray cloud that drifted alongside the ship. She pressed her goggles and tried to peek into the ship with the infrared and the x-ray. Nothing. Colder than a section 15 night. Untraceable by heat seeking, even up close. This is bad, she thought. But a shiver of excitement prickled her neck. No big players for what felt like years and now…Another thrill perked until she had to actively turn it into dread .

"No", she immediately shook that line of thought away. San Francisco can't handle another disaster, let alone stray fire from whatever this ship had. She would have to get closer, even without her standard section bike. The support drones arrived within seconds, and tentatively tried to attach themselves to the ship before it unceremoniously blasted deeper into the city, taking its cloak of clouds with it. She whistled long and low. She half hoped that it wasn't going where she thought it was going. She just got through with him, everyone was just through fighting him, and knocking his scaly butt back into the past.

Her half hope turned into full dread when an eerie glow flickered alive above the Giants stadium. She sped through the night air, the order Kepler yelled in her ear only dimly registering , the worry over an impending "resurrection" didn't exactly make for a waiting mood. When she reached the baseball field, the ship had lowered into the stadiums newly refurbished frame. Jade obscured her bike beneath its clouded aft in the now rain pelted seats. amidst the otherworldly bright orange glow that shone fifty feet below the hovering ship and its bluish clouds. Like an old scar reopening, a fissure below glowed in pulses of red, orange, and yellow. "Just like old times" She thought back. She looked below and saw about twenty individuals all dressed in what looked like army style combat gear, though what army was unclear.

But none of that mattered as much as what , or rather who, was being dragged out of the fissure via a glowing grappling hook. Drago. Or at least, she thought it was Drago. He was being pulled out of the gap, but not in the form he was sent in the netherworld with. He was normal, not the eldritch monstrosity they had defeated years ago , but humanoid and limp in the grapples grasp as rain from the cloud cover pelted him.

They pulled him out quickly , wrapping him in some kind of glowing hammock and hauled him into the ship. And there he went. There they went. The whole dang ship, lifted quickly, and sped off into the night sky. One of her biggest home runs was flying right out of the ballpark. She huffed angrily, now surrounded by other field agents. She's got a lot more than desk work ahead of her from now on.


	2. Chapter 2

Jade paced around the soundproof briefing room, along with the other high ranking officers. The graying, wiry Second lieutenant Lee sat in his usual spot at the round table, hands clasped firmly in his lap, his eyes shiftless and snobbish. 'As usual', Jade thought. She didn't trust the guy as far as she could throw him. Well, that might be a bit of a stretch, seeing as she(and pretty much any operative on sight), could probably chuck the man halfway across the New Bay. He was thin, wiry, mousey, and an ever-busy rat of a Second Lieutenant. Dhariah, the flowery First Lieutenant, sat still in her seat at the wall farthest to the back of the room, in the dimly lit recesses of the rock wall, her hair done up in a short bob of feathery auburn wings that gently caught the light of the round map.

Both sat quietly, one wearied and the other unruffled in the cave-like room. The violet hues of the office chairs in the dome-shaped rock office and the bright blue light of the circular three-dimensional map in the center of the hewn table did little to suppress the energy that made her shiver with excitement and anxiety. The thought of her black gloves hitting his scaly hide, wiping away his stupid sneer when he thought he had the upper hand. She tried shaking the thought away again, knowing full well if she showed a trace of excitement she could be benched.

Turning her thoughts to more a more 'practical' approach, as Jackie would call could hear one of his lectures now 'Who could he be working with?', 'who would scaly even want to work with? The Dark hand? Disbanded and relocated. Any of the old Demon sorcerers? Nah, they'd probably want to get out first after the stunt he pulled last time, but she wouldn't put it past them. This thought also had so much promise of retribution, reinvigoration, and revolution; in summary, a well seasoned,butt-kicking! Another grin threatened to sneak on her peach lips, and her catlike eyes lidded in approval at it. She snapped to attention as the current head of Section 13 as he walked into the room, his footfalls cool and heavy.

"What are we up against.", Captain Gold asked briskly. He was a tan man of medium build, with platinum blond hair slicked back into a stiff mass plastered to his head. Many would mistake him as a middle-aged version of the surfer boys of old that used to roam the shores of California, just put into a full-body, bullet-resistant black suit. "An old flame?" Lee asked, his voice as presumptuous and irritated as always. Jade bit back a scathing and rather appropriate remark about the skunk-like nature of his hair and attitude.

Thankfully Gold silenced Lee with a slight raising of his hand, yet his eyes were passive but serious, and they looked at Jade. It was an actual question to see if any of her 'irrational spontaneity'' would interfere with addressing this threat. Without skipping a beat, she replied "More like an annoying grease fire that needed to be put out sir." She made sure not to look at Lee "He'd pop up everywhere sir, worked with underlings in sets of three, searching for demonic energies, Likes to freelance. Hates higher management." She suppressed another smile as she remembered the many times he squirmed near an ocean or lake "And water"

Gold looked at Jade, eyes impassive "A proud streak that hates reproach" His grey-blue bagged eyes looked to her "A personality trait to be exploited, I'm sure", He stated simply. Lee then interjected: "But he apparently is working with some other entity with superior firepower and knowledge of things… magical" the much older Second Lieutenant breathed out as if put upon by the thought of fighting anything that got Jade even the tiniest bit intrigued. It usually ended up with him swimming in stale coffee and drowning in paperwork.

"We have sent several recon drones after the ship in question", Dharia interjected in her piquant southern twang. The very mention of the 'drones' made Jade's heart almost immediately sink. Drones usually did a pretty good job of recon, making agents like her only sparingly useful in the field. "Then we will wait until the information comes in and mount a drone oriented infiltration," The captain stated simply, the pitch and energy in his voice were winding down. The briefing was about to end. Jade made sure her disappointment didn't show. She wasn't keen on jeopardizing this chance at finally-and officially- being out in the field again and making herself a brand new dragon-skin handbag,

"However a task force is to be organized. We keep it low, keep it quiet. We cannot afford to mount a war against an enemy we are unsure of, nor should we alert them of our presence." His voice finally met its last pitch of lowness. "Jade, you will be assigned to this task force." Lees indignance was blatant on his face, but whatever weaslley comment he had turned into mousy silence. "Yes sir", Jade replied coolly. "Thank You, Sir". The other lieutenants filed out to attend their duties. All but Jade. She broke into the biggest, dumbest smile. She poked her head out the door, making sure her superiors were far enough away before pumping her fists, dancing and whisper-squealing "Yes!Yes!YES" as softly as possible. She then suavely smoothed her black hair and briskly walked out of the meeting room.

Her brisk walk didn't stay a walk long before Jade began dashing through the metallic blue section walls, boots clomping and arms pumping with each long and bouncing step of her sprint. The spry young agent dodged all incoming personnel that was in sight, hitting body serve after body swerves to avoid careening into each black-clad operative, earning a mildly annoyed 'whoas' or 'heys" or" agility-training-is in-the-gym-not-the halls", all of which received a hearty and earnest "Sorry!". She reached one of the stairs and hopped down whole flights and without missing a single stride skipped down the spiraling staircase, the yellowed light of the tube lamps shuttering over her peach skin and amber eyes. With a flourish of her right hand, she put on the audible comms for the Chan Clan.

"Yo, Jackie, Uncle, Tohru. Look alive, We have Got ourselves a situation!" Jade huffed into her comm, still skipping steps on the stairs. "Jade, the comm bursts are for emergencies only!"Jackie exclaimed indignantly "I think my ears are still ringing louder than any phone ever has!". "Does demon uprising via giant mysterious cloud ship constitute as an emergency?" Jade Clarified 's voice sunk from its high indignant pitch "We will meet in the deployment bay". Tohru's line yielded little more than a grunt in the affirmative. Uncle had yet to respond. As she rounded the corner, she slowed her role into a light gait, running her hands down her hair attempting to temper the smile that would give away her feelings over actually having a mission. First, she would need to make a quick stop.


End file.
